Bojan Maricik, civil society activist, expert for EU accession, law and politics, Former Deputy PM for European Affairs and Minister of Justice, North Macedonia on the Panel “The Rise of Far Right Nationalism”, at the Conference “Defending Democracy and Human Rights”, December 12, 2024 Skopje.
On the Western Balkans, there were always two competing narratives – the narrative of European integration and the narrative of right-wing nationalism that dominates the conflict or conflicted narrative in the Western Balkans.
Usually, when one of them doesn’t work, the other dominates. So, whenever the European integration as a narrative doesn’t work and doesn’t show results, then the right-wing radical nationalism dominates the narrative of the conflict. That’s unfortunately part of the political battle and the cleavage in all of the European societies. What we are witnessing in the past decade, and particularly past several years in France, in Italy, in Hungary, in Germany, as was mentioned, in the Netherlands, in many of the Višegrad Group, also countries, is something that is making us think that this is not only a Balkan specialty, but it is now a pan-European battle.
And I truly think that it is a pan-European battle. And that pan-European battle gets now, at the moment, in particular, in the countries of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, gets a radical form and gets a form in which this political battle becomes a societal battle with huge gap between the two parts of the society.
Why is this important? I don’t think that we can solve the challenge if we don’t go to the root. The root is how the politicians, how the mainstream political parties, and how the institutions are dealing with the emotions of the people. Because apparently politics, not only in the Balkans, but also in the EU, politics is about emotions. It’s not only about plans, it’s not only about laws, it’s not only about programs, but it is also about emotions. And I think that the rise of the radical nationalism, right-wing nationalism in North Macedonia, particularly, was a result of some unaddressed emotions of most of the Macedonian citizens who felt, in some way, disappointed, in some way, played out by the European Union and by parts of the government.
I’m not only civil activist, I was for seven years in the government, so I have a special responsibility, also, to speak about this. And also, I think that now we need to deal with those emotions and to translate them into action, to translate them into political action that will counter the radical right-wing nationalism
D. T.
Camera: Atanas Petrovski/ Igor Chadinovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
Photo: Robert Atanasovski/CIVIL
CONFERENCE, FULL VIDEO, Streamed live on December 12, 2024:
https://youtube.com/live/1f2Eo1ZXEQ0
PHOTO ARCHIVES: #DefendingDemocracy, Panel 1: Democracy under Siege
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#DefendingDemocracy, Panel 2: The Rise of Far-Right Nationalism
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#DefendingDemocrcy Panel 3: Countering Authoritarianism
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#DefendingDemocracy conference, Panel 4: Commitment to democracy
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#DefendingDemocracy Conference (overall)
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#DefendingDemocracy – workshop and meeting with the press
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#DefendingDemocracy PRESS CONFERENCE
For more information on the Conference, please visit the special website DefendingDemocracy
